It’s been rumored recently, and a couple days ago the company seemed to confirm it via Twitter — Obsidian Entertainment is working on putting together a Kickstarter project.

I’m…not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, Obsidian’s had it rough lately — as we reported a couple weeks ago, they’ve had to lay off staff and cancel an unnamed project because Fallout: New Vegas fell one point short on Metacritic. That’s s–tty, and I feel for them, but I don’t know if I like the idea of companies like Obsidian doing the Kickstarter thing.

Obsidian isn’t an indie developer working on niche titles — they’re a big company with hundreds of employees that works on AAA-budgeted titles for major publishers. Gamers only have so much money to spare — what happens when big developers like Obsidian start sucking up all the sweet Kickstarter cash? Will the Double Fines of the world still be able to do the Kickstarter thing when everyone’s already given to bigger developers who really should be able to fund their own passion projects?

What do you think? Will you support bigger developers like Obsidian getting into the Kickstarter game? Or should Kickstarter remain an indie/niche thing only?

I’m fine with it if they’re using it to fund a cult-ish game (or especially a sequel to such a game), for which they wouldn’t be able to get funding from a real publisher. It’s essentially just a more passionate form of pre-ordering. And the money all goes to the developers, rather than the publishers; which is a good thing, I believe. But I do think that this trend is probably going to wane pretty quickly. I’m sure it’ll continue to be a viable approach for sequels to cult hits; but for original titles, I doubt people will keep pitching in once the novelty wears off.

for as much as i don’t play videogames, i feel kickstarter should be left to dudes who’s only way of finishing their projects is through the use of kickstarter. I’m no math surgeon, but these big dudes are totally gonna crush the little dudes with the amount of money they’ll rake in just with their name. It kinda is a deterrent for other people to use probably if all that’s gonna become of kickstarter are these huge companies that will bum fuck them out of money.